1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to mobile telephony and related features thereof. More specifically, the present invention is directed to extending the functionality of a private branch exchange (PBX) to a mobile telephone or other mobile communication device. The present invention is further directed to providing other advanced services with respect to a mobile telephone that would otherwise be available only via a hard-wired networked computer and/or telecommunications system.
2. Background of the Invention
Voice communication is a touchstone of modem society and, in particular, business. Salespeople, technical people and employees at home, on the move, or on vacation, all need to stay in touch with colleagues and clients. However, when a businessperson leaves the office environment, he typically leaves behind a significant telecommunications infrastructure that resides in the business' telephone private branch exchange (PBX). A PBX offers tremendous functionality for the employee, such as calling line identity (including caller ID), conferencing, transferring, internal number plans and group calling and, more significantly, the PBX also allows IS/IT administrators to manage and provide high-quality, competitive, and cost efficient corporate telephony communications by means of features such as call screening and monitoring, Least Cost Routing (LCR), Virtual Private Networks (VPN), automated recording, automatic routing to switchboards, Interactive Voice Response systems (IVR), voice messaging systems, and call centers. However, this functionality is abandoned the instant the businessperson leaves the businesses premises and uses public mobile telephony services rather than the private fixed telephony system. Thus, when a businessperson is on the road, it is, at the very least, inconvenient, if not impossible, to avail himself of the functionality offered by a PBX. For instance, the PBX contains a set of conferencing features that allow employees to set up both blind and two-step conferences on the fly that are normally inaccessible from a mobile telephone.
Similarly, although some businesses allow their employees to divert office telephone calls to their mobile telephone, the mobile user employee is not able to see the true calling line identity of a diverted call, as the identity of the PBX trunk line is presented by the mobile network instead, and it is very cumbersome for employees to transfer the call to another PBX user, and impossible to allow the PBX to automatically route the call to another PBX user or group if the diverted call is not answered.
Thus, as can be readily appreciated, basic PBX functionality is not available to a mobile telephone user.
In addition, while the use of mobile telephones has exploded in recent years, mobile telephones have also introduced inconveniences of their own. For example, now, not only must a businessperson provide a telephone number that is associated with his company, but the businessperson must also provide a mobile telephone number that is associated with his personal mobile telephone. As a result, instead of keeping track of one telephone number, clients, colleagues, etc., must now keep track of at least two telephone numbers for a particular person. This unnecessarily fills address books and quickly becomes unmanageable, especially as mobile telephone users change service providers as mobile service provider competitors offer better and/or less expensive service.
This mix of company and personal telephone numbers also poses a significant problem for the company when the employee is terminated or leaves, as important corporate clients will keep placing business calls to the terminated employee's personal mobile telephone number, bypassing any corporate call management mechanism in place to ensure that customers calls are answered and responded to in an appropriate manner, also creating a risk that hostile former employees get the opportunity to damage or steal the client relationship.
Also, while mobile telephones provide exceptional opportunities for staying in touch, generally speaking, international mobile telephone calls are much more expensive than calls made via a company's telephone service, especially if the company exploits the advantages of negotiating for bulk telecommunications services.
Thus along with the advantages and convenience of mobile telephony there are, however, also several disadvantages, inconveniences, and failings of this technology, especially with respect to the business environment.